The Apple Blossom Festival site tells us: “Apples found their way to Washington State in 1826 on a Hudson’s Bay Company sailing vessel. Seeds of a “good luck” apple were planted at Fort Vancouver, WA in the spring of 1827. From this auspicious beginning, the Washington apple industry has grown to national significance, producing about 100 million boxes of apples each season”.

The festival first open in 1920 and was originally called Blossoms Days. It hosts 100 000 visitors a year.

Wenatchee, Pop. 35 000, is located at the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia rivers, in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range. Irrigation from the Columbia River and its tributaries allows for the large amount of agriculture in Wenatchee and the surrounding areas. The natural (pre-irrigation) landscape of the area is called locally “The Desert” (actually a semi-arid steppe). The tree blossoms are made even more spectacular by the surrounding dry hills.

All photos by the inactivist

By Internet Archive Book Images –

Wenatchee: Named after the Wenatchii, a Salish tribe. Site of 11 000 years-old Clovis points and one of frontlines in the Yakima War. In 1931, the Miss Veedol landed in East Wenatchee after crossing the Pacific Ocean from Japan, for the 1st time ever in an airplane (in 41 hours}. Location of the “Wenatchee Witch Hunt“, a hysterical child abuse prosecutions scandal in 1994 and 1995.

A libelous and ill-informed article from the LA Times called “Wenatchee, The Little Town of Horrors : This bucolic Northwest city seemed to epitomize the innocence of rural America. Then came a plague of grisly crimes, natural disasters and a child sex scandal”.

By Sampsonsimpson20 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5738946